Bookish Blog Hops is a group for people taking part in bookish blog hops. The current blog hop is "My Bookish Valentine".

Each day of the blog hop a different member hosts a bookish question on their blog and includes the answers from other members in the post.

It's a fun way to collaborate together to reach a bigger audience, and spread the love of books.

I run the group, and post about upcoming blog hops that you can be part of.

My Bookish Valentine

Come and join in the fun and be part of the My Bookish Valentine Blog Hop. If you're a book blogger,and want to collaborate with others, this is a fun way of driving new traffic to your site whilst networking with others.

This is how it works:

Join the Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/127759384464964/ (this is the official group for Bookish Blog Hops and where everything is organised).

In the group you'll find the sign up link for the blog hop and have access to the files for that blog hop. You just add your name and url next to the question you would like to host (under host), and sign up for the questions you want to answer. You can answer as few, or as many as you like. The more you answer, the more visibility you get.

Using the files link you then go to the dates for the questions you signed up for and post your answer to each question in the word file. You can upload a head shot photo of yourself or the cover of the book(s) you talk about in your answer to be used in the post.

Everyone taking part in the blog hop will be sharing each of the posts and so it's a nice way to reach a wider audience. It creates good backlinks between the sites too which helps them rate better in search results. It also gives hosts easy content for their sites as they just copy and paste the answers from the file in their blog post.

These are the questions for the My Bookish Valentine Blog Hop which will be taking place in February:

N.B. You don't have to host in order to be able to answer the questions. You can just answer the questions, although you'll get more traffic to your site if you host too ;)

I hope you can join us.

We're now into the second week of the new year, and life is anything but boring. This past week had it's highs and lows. I didn't reach all of my goals for week. Life threw me a curve ball and I've been concentrating on dealing with that.

My curve ball

I have a lump on my breast. Turns out the lump is a cyst. This is what side tracked me this week. To all the females reading this please, please, make sure you check yourself regularly. It's only takes a minute and is so very important. Anyway, I've been to doctors appointments and to the hospital for tests over the past few days (should get results back next week). I'm not too worried so please don't freak out. It's probably nothing serious. It just needs to be taken care of.

On the up

I do have some good news though. I've done better with my challenges this week.

Challenge 1: To write 500 words a day.

I finally coloured in some squares for writing on my habit tracker. Don't get too excited. I only did 2 days, but I did write over 500 words on both so technically I'm not actually that far off my goal when you consider the average over the week. Unfortunately my goal isn't to average 500 words per day over the course of the week, it's to write over 500 words per day period. Still I'm all about searching for the positive side of things this week and at least I improved on last week.

Challenge 2: Read for the 2018 A to Z Challenge.

I read every day except one this week. I made progress on both Moranifesto, and the Online Writers Companion AND I finished my first book for the A to Z Challenge! I read The Art of Fear by Pamela Crane (for the letter A). I'll be doing a review for it soon.

Challenge 3: Read for Beat The Backlist.

This was a fail again this week as The Art of Fear was a book I got from Amazon and not on my review backlist.

Challenge 4: Editing

I finished editing 365 Days of Quotes for Writers and got it set up as a pre-order on Amazon ready for release on 17th January. Read my post about it here or hop over to Amazon and pre-order now ;)

Challenge 5: Exercise everyday

This is the one challenge that I've actually managed to do everyday so far. Already feeling better for it too. Been doing mainly variations of squats and crunches. No equipment. All done at home.

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” —Stephen Hawking #Quote #QOTD

How did your second week of 2018 go? Are you on track with your goals for this year? Let me know in the comments below.

2018 Challenges Update: Week 1

We're just a few days into 2018 and I'm already slacking with my New Year resolutions. I've been busy... very busy... just not with my challenge goals. I'm trying to look at this from a positive point of view. There's always a positive side to everything right? So, what is the positive side of being a complete failure?